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Brief Communication

Nature Methods 5, 877–879 (1 October 2008) | doi:10.1038/nmeth.1253

Imaging individual mRNA molecules using multiple singly labeled probes

Arjun Raj , Patrick van den Bogaard , Scott A Rifkin , Alexander van Oudenaarden & Sanjay Tyagi

We describe a method for imaging individual mRNA molecules in fixed cells by probing each mRNA species with 48 or more short, singly labeled oligonucleotide probes. This makes each mRNA molecule visible as a computationally identifiable fluorescent spot by fluorescence microscopy.